The Czech Republic cabinet remained intact in 2011, but the three-party ruling coalition underwent several crises that damaged its credibility among voters. The popularity of Prime Minister Petr Necas’s centre-right government was further hit by the approval of long-awaited pension, taxation, and health care reforms, which attracted large-scale protests from trade unions, as well as criticism from the political opposition.

The first political crisis of 2011 began in March when a series of corruption-related scandals and ministers’ resignations threatened to bring down the government. Following some initial personnel changes, the leaders of the three coalition parties—the Civic Democrats (ODS), Tradition Responsibility Prosperity 09 (TOP 09), and Public Affairs (VV)—reached a tentative agreement in mid-May. The government was thrown into another wave of uncertainty in early June after newly reelected VV leader Radek John threatened to remove his party from the ruling coalition unless it gained additional ministerial positions. On July 1 the VV was given the posts of deputy prime minister and transport minister, and the dispute was resolved.

Conflicts continued to emerge as Necas struggled to retain control of both the government and his own party, the ODS. In August, TOP 09 began boycotting government sessions with the aim of removing an Education Ministry clerk who was accused of having neo-Nazi affiliations. The clerk was transferred to another position. Another dispute soon emerged over the government’s appointment of a coordinator for EU affairs, a move that Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, the TOP 09 leader, saw as impinging on his own position. In October an internal conflict was exposed within the ODS after Necas dismissed his party’s own agriculture minister, citing dissatisfaction with his performance. In November the ODS-appointed industry and commerce minister resigned on suspicion of fraud.

On the policy front, fiscal reforms ranked among the Czech Republic’s key challenges in 2011, given the cabinet’s aim of reducing the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2013. Despite the ruling coalition’s strong parliamentary majority, moving ahead with those changes was more difficult than imagined because of squabbling among the governing parties.

In September the Chamber of Deputies backed the government’s pension-reform legislation as well as preliminary changes to the health care system, but the approval process was slowed by the opposition’s majority in the Senate. Although the Chamber of Deputies managed to override a Senate veto of reform legislation in November, the opposition threatened to take the legislation before the Constitutional Court. The new pension plan, which was widely viewed as insufficient and poorly prepared, maintained the pay-as-you-go system while allowing workers to voluntarily divert 3% from their social tax payment to private pension funds, on the condition that they add 2% from their salaries. The cabinet planned to finance those changes through an increase in the value-added tax. In addition, the cabinet in August backed taxation reforms aimed at simplifying the current system by abolishing the 15% personal income tax on the “super gross wage” (which included both salary and social insurance payments) and replacing it with a flat tax of 19% on salaries alone, but the government agreed in November to delay the introduction of such changes until 2014.

The Czech economy performed fairly well in 2011, boosted by continued strong growth in industrial production and exports. In contrast, domestic demand was dampened by fiscal austerity measures that took effect at the start of the year. By mid-2011 industry had begun to show signs of weakening as the situation elsewhere in Europe deteriorated. Consumer price inflation—which remained under the Czech National Bank’s 2% target band throughout most of the year—allowed for continued low interest rates, which stood below those of the European Central Bank throughout 2011.

In December the world mourned the loss of Czech statesman and intellectual Vaclav Havel. Arguably the most successful dissident-turned-leader to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet sphere, Havel played a key role in the Velvet Revolution that led to a democratic Czechoslovakia, and he served two terms as president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003).

October 5, 1936 Prague, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic] December 18, 2011 Hrádeček, Czech Republic Czech playwright, poet, and political dissident, who, after the fall of communism, was president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and of the Czech Republic (1993–2003).

former country in central Europe encompassing the historical lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. Czechoslovakia was formed from several provinces of the collapsing empire of Austria-Hungary in 1918, at the end of World War I. In the interwar period it became the most prosperous and politically...